Alecia Gross earned a B.S. from the University of New Hampshire in Biochemistry and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Brandeis University in Waltham, MA in 2002. Prior to joining the UAB faculty in the Department of Vision Sciences in 2006, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, TX.

The research interests of the Gross Lab are mainly focused on rhodopsin-mediated retinal degenerations and molecular mechanisms of photoreceptor membrane biogenesis; in particular, the molecular interactions necessary for formation of healthy photoreceptor disk membranes. Studies are currently focused on understanding those interactions that are defective when rhodopsin lacks the proper structure at its carboxy-terminus, as is the case in several of most forms of the blinding disease autosomal dominant retinitis pigmentosa. Knock-in mice bearing rhodopsin carboxy-terminal mutations will be used and new ones constructed to aid in the detection of binding partners to the C-terminus of rhodopsin implicated in rhodopsin trafficking.